RANDOM(6)                    FreeBSD Games Manual                    RANDOM(6)

NAME
     random - random lines from a file or random numbers

SYNOPSIS
     random [-elrUuw] [-f filename] [denominator]

DESCRIPTION
     Random has two distinct modes of operations.  The default is to read
     lines from standard input and write them to standard output with a
     probability of 1.0 / denominator.  (denominator is a real number greater
     than or equal to 1.0.)  The default denominator for this mode of
     operation is 2.0, giving each line a 50% chance of being displayed.

     The second mode of operation, selected with the -f filename option, reads
     the specified file and outputs the randomized contents to standard
     output.  The contents can be randomized in units of lines (split on
     newline characters) or in units of words (split on space characters as
     determined by isspace(3).) The default denominator for this mode of
     operation is 1.0, which displays every line.

     The options are as follows:

     -e      If the -e option is specified, random does not read or write
             anything, and simply exits with a random exit value of 0 to
             denominator - 1, inclusive.  In this mode, denominator must be
             less than or equal to 256.

     -f filename
             The -f option is used to specify the filename to read from.
             Standard input is used if filename is `-'.

     -l      Randomize the input via newlines (the default).

     -r      Do not buffer output.

     -U      Reuse any given line or word when creating a randomized output.

     -u      Do not select the same line or word from a file more than once
             (the default).  This does not guarantee uniqueness if there are
             two of the same tokens in the input.

     -w      Randomize words separated by isspace(3) instead of newlines.

SEE ALSO
     fortune(6)

HISTORY
     The functionality to randomizing lines and words was added in 2003 by
     Sean Chittenden <seanc@FreeBSD.org>.

BUGS
     This tool is a remnant of the "games" collection formerly part of FreeBSD
     base.  It probably should have been removed to ports with the rest of
     that collection.  It does not have a coherent purpose and the motivation
     for it to be a core base utility is nonobvious.

     No index is used when printing out tokens from the list which makes it
     rather slow for large files (10MB+).

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6        February 15, 2020       FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6